


unfold

by kiaronna



Series: YOI One-Shots [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Bonding, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Fluff, Gen, Hair Brushing, M/M, Mutual Pining, One Shot, SOMP, Sibling Bonding, brief mention young katsuki yuuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 13:29:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14333460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiaronna/pseuds/kiaronna
Summary: It’s strange, to think of the ways he’s tried to make other people love him, and how none of his techniques seem to work here. He’d tried, with Hiroko, only to realize he didn’t need to; she already loved him. Now he’s trying with Mari—reeling in all those grating parts of himself, the ones that chafe against other people. Turning them inward, to grate at him instead. For as long as he can manage; for as long as he has to.Viktor may have promised to be himself. Yet it takes more than an afternoon on a beach to imagine opening, vulnerable and new, to the whole world rather than just one man.With Mari, he’s sure, he just needs to work harder.





	unfold

 It’s the end of summer before Viktor is left alone with Mari, cigarette flicking lazily in her mouth—up and down, up and down. Viktor can’t imagine it—both the smoke and even that tiny extra spark of _heat_ , so close to her face. The final nudge over the tipping point into Hasetsu’s smothering, sweltering grasp.

Viktor is sucking the last bits of a watermelon rind, sweetness giving way to sour, legs tossed past the bottom wooden step, so grass tickles his heels.

Her steady hands scrub dutifully, quietly at the stain on a piece of cloth. Her red sleeves billow, scrunched up around her elbows. They’re soft—everything about the Katsukis, even the harshest of them, seems blurred and rounded.

Viktor has been trying, very hard, to make some form of conversation. Viktor has been trying very hard. It’s strange, to think of the ways he’s tried to make other people love him, and how none of his techniques seem to work here. He’d tried, with Hiroko, only to realize he didn’t need to; she already loved him. Now he’s trying with Mari—reeling in all those grating parts of himself, the ones that chafe against other people. Turning them inward, to grate at him instead. For as long as he can manage; for as long as he has to.

Viktor can slide down smoothly into people’s hearts, if he works at it. If he folds himself the right way.

Viktor may have promised to be himself. Yet it takes more than an afternoon on a beach to imagine opening, vulnerable and new, to the whole world rather than just one man.

With Mari, he’s sure, he just needs to work harder. Find the angle, the shape of affection. Mari likes quiet; Mari likes boy bands; Mari likes _cats_ , of all things. Mari, unlike her brother, can let the shirt she’s scrubbing cling wetly to her knees while she stares into the blue space between the trees and the sky while she just _exists,_ motionless. Suspended, thoughtfully, in a moment.

There’s so many _questions_ Viktor wants to ask her, but intruding would only be an annoyance.

Viktor can’t afford to be an annoyance. Somehow, he’s convinced himself: if all of the residents of Hasetsu like him, the only one that he loves will be bound to follow.

“Do you know,” Mari says, suddenly, “what it’s like to be an only child for seven years, and then suddenly have a baby sibling?”

Viktor does not.

(He doesn’t know where she’s going with this, either.)

“Happy?” He tries. “Excited?”

Mari snorts, cigarette embers gleaming red.

“Try 'annoyed.'”

Oh.

“If you think he cries a lot now, you should’ve seen him then. All big brown eyes and tiny drooling mouth—he got ahold of all of my favorite toys. When he was three he yanked out my first piercing and I had to go to the hospital.”

This seems somber. Viktor shouldn’t be smiling, shouldn’t be thinking about chubby cheeks and sticky hands. “A dangerous childhood.”

“You know how stubborn he is. Imagine having an argument with him when he was eight. Telling him he _couldn’t do something_.” A challenge. Viktor can’t help but laugh—he knows _exactly_ how well that would go. “Then he’s twelve, and only has two friends, and only seems able to talk about two subjects: one of them figure skating, and the other…”

“Dogs?” Viktor prompts. Mari smiles, a slow and satisfied curl.

“Sure.”

They sit there for a few moments. Mari starts scrubbing at the shirt in her hands again; Viktor isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do. He’s never sure, these days. Russia’s supposedly suave superstar, lost on where to put his jinbei tie or his watermelon rind or his mouth.

“I don’t understand,” he finally blurts, when he can’t take it anymore. Viktor doesn’t feel smooth, doesn’t feel like he’s folding correctly. She doesn’t look his way, just holds the laundry in the air, apparently satisfied, before crouching and swinging to her feet. Viktor stares up at her. She stares down at him.

“Brothers,” she concludes, “are supposed to annoy you, Viktor.”

_So shouldn’t you start?_

She leaves it unsaid, but it’s a feeling. So maybe it’s best that there are no words.

 

* * *

 

“Here,” Viktor says, without preamble. She squints at the collection in his arms, slouching against the entryway to the onsen’s cozy bar.

“Is this that expensive face stuff or lotion you’re always trying to share with him?”

“No,” Viktor says, “it’s expensive _hair_ care.” Wiggling the box of supplies a little, he extends it out to her. “Your hair is, well, dry. With a lot of split ends. You’ve bleached it to death.”

Mari’s hair is dry, but so is her tone when she replies, “so you’re saying my hair is ugly and I don’t take care of it?”

“I didn’t _say_ that,” is Viktor’s careful exploration. Then, he adds pointedly, “it’s not ugly.” Mari smirks.

“Sure. This is nice of you, Viktor. Bribe me to ‘forget’ that I caught you two making out in his room anytime.”

If only she’d caught them kissing, rather than in the midst of a cautious, familiar circling of the _idea_ of it.

Viktor follows Mari rather than hammer at his crumbling, yearning thoughts on the matter. She sits, crosslegged, and begins to root curiously through the box.

“I’m not sure all of it will work with your hair,” he says, “it’s very thick.” Her hair is _lustrous_ , blessed in the Katsuki style, even when it’s been treated into submission. If Viktor’s hair were tested in that way, it’d probably shrink to nothingness.

Mari raps at him, gently, with a bottle.

“Organize them for me, please.”

Spray and mousse and leave-in treatments; by the time he’s sorted through even half the box, she’s returned, comb in hand. Her headband has disappeared, though the way her hair sits, it may as well still be there.

Viktor reaches out—an offer—Viktor just wants to help, but it’s easy to see from the startled retraction he earns that it was a misstep.

“Sorry.”

“No,” she says, “I just don’t do domestic things like that. Not for…” she pauses, considers, then shakes her head. “Save that,” she finally decides, “for him.” Viktor doesn’t ask what she means. “What’s first?”

He pumps a shining pink dollop into her hand, and she puts it into her hair with an amused sigh.

Viktor wants to talk endlessly about figure skating, and dogs, and the man he loves. Ordinarily he would wonder if he _should_.

He’s supposed to annoy her. So he does.

Mari is a little quiet, and a little coldly emotional, and asks uncomfortable questions, but she listens.

When Viktor goes quiet, she still listens, and she smiles, smoky and slow. Viktor at 27 doesn't unfold for many people-- at the banquet first, Viktor's heart dropping and splaying wide without a choice. For him, again, here, blooming and tidal and impossibly close. Mama, like waking up. Minako, prying him open with fierce eyes and plying him with sake.

Mari, patient. So many summer nights had been spent dancing across the dark sand, Hasetsu's beach in the evening, crouching and waiting for sea turtles to crawl from the ocean and nest. The first time the surf gifted them one, the man Viktor loves held his hand, the first time. Life and...

Mari waits for him to unfold like they had for sea turtles in the night, and it feels so simple.

Coconut and shea and mango hang heavy in the usually damp air of the onsen; it’s not long before Makkachin comes to investigate. Not long before she’s followed, too.

“Yuuri!”

His feet are bare, hair rumpled, pajama shirt hanging low off one strong shoulder. His glasses are still on his bedside table, Viktor knows. He doesn’t need them, to play video games or sit on his computer.

He squints, in the lamplight, as if he’s not sure what he’s seeing.

“Come on,” Mari says, “Viktor is giving me Western movie star hair.”

“I’m not,” Viktor disagrees, mildly, but it dies on his lips when Yuuri settles close, voice low.

“You’re fixing Mari’s hair?”

Mari slides her comb through, a few more times, and Makkachin noses her head beneath Viktor’s hand.

“No,” says Viktor, just as Mari emphasizes,

“No. Now what?”

“Wait an hour, or sleep with it like that, and just shower in the morning.” Oh, but he’d forgotten. With a clap of his hands, Viktor pulls to his feet. “I’ll ask Mama for something to protect your pillow with.”

By the time he returns, Yuuri has curiously dismantled his careful arrangement of supplies. This shouldn’t surprise Viktor—Yuuri dismantles everything of his, breaks him into flurried, lovestruck chaos.

His cheeks are pink as he sniffs a particular spray bottle—one of Viktor’s favorites—and go pinker when Mari prods him in Japanese.

“I’m back,” Viktor announces, unnecessarily.

“I’m going to bed,” Mari says, leaving the scatter of haircare and also the mess that is Viktor and Yuuri. One pat of her leg, and Makkachin follows.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, and licks his lips, just once. His head and amber eyes hang low. “Would you…”

But he shakes his head, and the question is never asked. Viktor doesn’t need him to ask it. Viktor understands: unspoken words from Yuuri, spoken ones from his sister. He scoots closer, and Yuuri puts the comb on his knee, each knuckle absentmindedly strumming one of Viktor’s nerves.

He _wants_.

“May I try something with you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, fam. I am working on all the things, even if I am doing it at the pace of a sea turtle. I am also about to start participating in zines! So. Keep an eye out for that. :)  
> Here's my [ tumblr ](kiaronna.tumblr.com)! Where I occasionally post snippets of things.


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